But most important of all, with Carol there was never that
uneasy feeling of not knowing exactly what she was thinking and what she was
likely to do. He and Carol understood each other completely. Each had something
the other wanted. It was a well-defined exchange of her family’s political
connections for his money and clout in the corporate world. A business
arrangement, really. He had no fear of being caught off guard in a business arrangement
because when it came to business, Drew knew he was damn good. The best. The one
in control.
No doubt about it; Carol’s dowry was going to be her well-connected
family. She was the daughter of the man who would almost certainly be the next
U.S. senator from the state of Florida. Jake Galloway didn’t have as much money
as Victor Thorndyke had had, but that was no longer important now that Drew had
enough of his own.
For Drew Buchanan had learned that there was something even
more interesting in life than money. Something called power. Politics was the
path which led to real power.
***
The flight back to Seattle was uneventful, even soothing, Samantha
decided. From thirty thousand feet one’s problems seemed a little less real,
and once back on the ground again there were the welcome distractions of
locating her Fiat in the airport parking lot, waiting in line for the ferry
which would transport her back to the island she called home, and the rain. It
was still raining, just as it had been when she’d left for California.
The weather suited her mood. California had been too damn
sunny and cheerful.
The old Victorian house awaited her patiently, but it did
not wait alone, Samantha realized as she spotted the black Ferrari in the
curving drive. Eric was here. Just what she needed after a long, unsatisfactory
business trip. She loved her half brother dearly, but his presence didn’t
always bode well-for her peace of mind. Then again, she could use whatever
interruption Eric Thorndyke might be bringing into her life. The alternative was
to spend the evening dwelling on the time with Gabriel.
She was about as likely to hear from Sinclair in three days
as she was to learn how to crochet. The odds were decidedly against either
event, she thought morosely as she parked the car.
“Where the hell have you been? I had to pry open a back
window yesterday to get into the house. What happened to the key you always leave
in the flower box?” Eric met her at the door with a can of beer in one hand and
a bag of natural-style potato chips in the other. He was frowning, the
Thorndyke blue eyes brooding and impatient. Samantha had inherited Vera’s eyes,
a fact which had always pleased her mother.
But the son born to Victor Thorndyke and his wife Emily had
been a truly legitimate member of the family, unlike his half sister. He had
wound up with his father’s eyes, near-black hair, and dark good looks. He was
one year younger than Samantha and the only member of the Thorndyke clan she
could tolerate for more than five minutes.
It was probably the fact that he was so much younger than
his older, legitimate brother and sister which had initially accounted for his
ready acceptance of Samantha. She had been close to his age, and her natural
independence had appealed to the rebel in a young boy struggling for his own
identity and style in a domineering family. They had mutually agreed to accept
each other from the day they had met when Samantha was sixteen and Eric
fifteen.
Samantha had always known her father’s name, of course, and
clearly understood why her last name wasn’t Thorndyke. Vera had made no secret
out of it, nor had she seen any reason to pretend for the child’s sake that her
father had died. Samantha had been forced to learn pride very quickly in the
face of the cruel questions of the other children in school. Pride and a fierce
defensiveness of her mother. Vera had told her, too, that Victor Thorndyke had
another family and Samantha would never be a part of it. Vera explained very
carefully that Samantha didn’t need her father.
To a large extent, Samantha supposed, that was true. Her
mother gave her everything; an excellent education, maternal devotion which,
though of a somewhat unconventional nature, was nevertheless quite intense, and
the ability to stand on her own two feet. Invaluable gifts for any child.
But even when she had been very young, the curiosity was
there, moving about occasionally in the back of Samantha’s mind and generating
a kind of restlessness. She comprehended the fact that her father didn’t even know
of her existence, and she understood when her mother explained that a man in
Victor
Thorndyke’s
position would not be at all
pleased to learn he had an illegitimate daughter after all these years.
Vera even explained that the legitimate members of the
Thorndyke family had rights. Samantha was told early on that it wouldn’t be
very pleasant for Victor’s wife and children to have inflicted on them the knowledge
of a daughter born to another woman. And it wasn’t as if Victor had
deliberately gotten Vera pregnant and just abandoned her. It was Vera who had terminated
the affair once her goal of conceiving Samantha had been accomplished.
“Didn’t you ever think of asking him to divorce his wife and
marry you?” Samantha had asked naive y one
day at the age of twelve.
“I had no right to do such a thing!” Vera had retorted at
once and had then gone on to deliver an enlightening lesson on the subject of
taking responsibility for one’s own actions. She had also added a salutary
fillip on the topic of the rights of other people such as Emily Thorndyke. “I
knew what I was doing when I had the affair with Victor, Samantha. I also knew
from the beginning that marriage was not possible. To tell you the truth, I
would not have married him, anyway, even if it had been a possibility. Marriage
would have stifled me, dear. It would stifle any independent, creative woman. It
is an archaic institution which has never benefited women. The only ones who
ever got anything useful out of marriage were men. It is basically an economic institution,
Samantha, but one which no longer provides even financial security for women.
You don’t need marriage.”
The nagging curiosity about her father had persisted, however,
driving her eventually to the public library at the age of sixteen. There, with
the help of a reference librarian, she had looked up the Thorndyke name in a huge
book which listed all major U.S. companies. There, under the “T”s was a
corporation called Thorndyke Industries. Victor Thorndyke, President.
For several weeks Samantha hugged the newfound information
to her, telling herself it was enough and that she could stop there. But all
too soon she wanted more. She wanted to meet Victor Thorndyke.
At last, unable to keep her need secret any longer, Samantha
had dared broach the issue to her mother. She had started out with a lot of
carefully detailed reasons as to why she should be allowed to meet her father
and had ended up in tears, begging Vera to make the phone call which would
inform Victor he had another daughter. Sensing that if she didn’t step in and monitor
the situation Samantha would make some wild attempt on her own to achieve the
contact with Victor, Vera had reluctantly taken on the task of delicately initiating
it.
No one could have foreseen
Thorndyke’s
response, least of all Vera, who had expected to be immediately rebuffed by her
ex-lover. Instead he had recovered almost immediately from his astonishment,
and then he had demanded to be introduced to his offspring. He never doubted
the child was his. He’d known Vera well enough to realize she would never lie
about a thing like that. The question in his own mind was how much money she
was going to want to keep Samantha’s existence a secret. He had taken a plane
east, using business as an excuse less than a week after Vera’s call.
The eventual meeting had totally unexpected ramifications. Thorndyke
had walked into the Maitland home half-expecting to fend off a cheap blackmail
attempt and had stayed to be enchanted by his unbearably tense, terribly
frightened daughter.
No one could have guessed at the instant rapport which
blossomed to life immediately between father and daughter, especially not Vera.
Thorndyke had seen at once the resemblance to himself which went far deeper
than a superficial molding of features. It was a way of thinking, a way of
reasoning, and a natural aptitude for business which made Samantha his true
heir in a way duplicated only in his youngest son. He accepted Samantha
completely. She was an extension of himself, just as Eric was.
For a time the news of Samantha’s existence was kept between
the three involved parties. Whenever his business took him east, Thorndyke
arranged a visit with his daughter. Samantha had never known for certain
whether or not her father and Vera had ever resumed their affair. There was no
doubt but that the attraction still flared between the two adults, but they
were both far too discreet to involve Samantha in that aspect of their lives.
Then one day Victor had announced his intention of acknowledging
Samantha to his California family. Vera had protested angrily, pointing out the
trauma it would cause everyone, but Thorndyke had been insistent. In the end,
Vera could only demand that Samantha not be forced to face the other
Thorndykes
in a confrontation scene. Victor had understood
and respected that request.
He had flown back to California, and the next time he came
east he was accompanied by his youngest son. Fifteen years of age, Eric had
been as curious about his new sister as Samantha was about him. They had gotten
along from the first.
During the next several years Samantha had had a great deal
of contact with her father, although she had never met any other member of his
family except Eric. Thorndyke had been the one to guide her when she selected a
university which would provide her with a good grounding in business. He had
been the one to assist in finding her the first job after graduation.
Vera, to her credit, had learned to accept this new influence
in her daughter’s life, certain that, having had her to herself for sixteen
years, she’d done a solid job of instilling the important tenets Samantha would
need to survive as a woman and as a socially conscious member of society. Vera
had even been objective enough to realize that Samantha’s talents lay in the
business world, and she didn’t try to force her daughter into the academic environment.
“You can do just as much good on the front lines as you can
from the ivory tower, perhaps more,” she’d enthused to Samantha. “Capitalism
needs to be tempered by a social conscience.”
Victor Thorndyke had taken great pleasure in helping plan
his daughter’s career, especially because he was discovering at the same time
that he was going to be denied that pleasure with Eric. Eric was going off on
an unexpected tangent, a direction which Victor considered a deplorable waste
of talent. Eric had turned into a computer freak.
After helping Samantha choose a school and a first job,
Victor had also assisted in the decision to move Samantha on when the position
proved limiting.
“Timing is everything in a business career,” he’d told her. “Knowing
when to move is more important than knowing when to stay.”
There was an up-and-coming development firm down in Florida,
he told Samantha one afternoon on a periodic trip to the East Coast. Perhaps
she should look into it. Working for a dynamic, fast-moving company such as the
Buchanan Group provided plenty of opportunity for high-achievers like Samantha.
He had not foreseen the possibility of his daughter falling in love with the
chief executive officer or that Drew Buchanan would manipulate her as easily as
he was manipulating his business ventures.
The eventual meeting with the rest of the Thorndyke clan had
occurred two years ago when Samantha had been summoned for the reading of
Victor’s will. Distraught at the loss of her father, she had been unprepared for
the scene in the attorney’s office when she came face-to-face with the full
weight of her actions that day in the public library when she’d looked up the Thorndyke
name.
The resentment and disdain on the part of Victor’s widow,
Emily, his eldest son, Victor Junior, and his other daughter, Amanda, was a
palpable wall against which she had floundered the moment she entered the room.
Samantha had reacted with a savagely cool, defensive arrogance
which would have done Vera proud. She’d turned down the money which had been
left to her as if it amounted to peanuts instead of a fortune and had walked
out of the room without a backward glance.
For some odd reason she knew her refusal to take the inheritance
had irritated the
Thorndykes
as much if not more than
the fact that she had been included in the will in the first place. It was as
if, by walking away from it, she hadn’t proved herself to be the mercenary
little bitch they had all been certain she really was. Only Eric had
appreciated the gesture. Anything which flew in the face of natural Thorndyke
dominance appealed to him. He had envied Samantha’s sheer guts in the matter. Looking
at him now, Samantha realized she was rather glad to see him again.
“I haven’t left the key in the flowerpot since the last time
you were here and lectured me about the stupid security habits of the female of
the species,” Samantha quipped lightly to her half brother as she climbed out
of the car and started up the steps with her suitcase. “Do any damage to my
window?”
“Nah, it’s fine. Your phone’s been ringing off the hook.”
Eric took her bag from her hand as she entered the house. He had a pleasant
fire going in the old brick fireplace and a sportscaster’s voice boomed from
the television set in the corner. The remains of a box of takeout fried chicken
littered the coffee table. “Where have you been, Sam?”